


Habit

by pbsee



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Insomnia, M/M, Vanven, ironic how the boy who slept for 10 years suddenly can't sleep, post-kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 05:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18025934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pbsee/pseuds/pbsee
Summary: Ventus knew, if he waited long enough, that He would appear. Like a page out of a children's book- the monster coveted by the shadows, always by his side, watching, lying in wait...Somewhere in the pages, it stopped being scary.





	Habit

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Here's a little drabble born from post-kh3 headcanons about Ventus being fearful of sleep mixed with my refusal to believe Vanitas is actually gone forever and my long standing appreciation for vanven. I would love to write more of them in the future, maybe add to this as a collection of sorts? We'll see. I think I've looked at this one for too long and can't tell how I feel about it anymore, so hopefully it's sensible...! 
> 
> Enjoy!

The war was over. A temporary peace seemed to settle over the worlds and with it came a blanketed quiet that its inhabitants hadn’t had the luxury of in years. 

But Ven couldn’t find it in him to savor it.

Laying in bed listening to the sound of the empty mountains surrounding his home was nothing like it used to be. Nothing like Ven  _hoped_ it would be.

It frustrated him. Gnawed at his mind. Exhaustion weighing him down but not enough to mute the thoughts rolling around in his head. Enough to keep him stirring well into the night.

He rubbed at his tired eyes and from behind them he replayed the faces of his friends, their day spent together on loop. _Terra…Aqua…_ the family that had been gifted to him out of the vilest intentions; and, despite all the tragedy, he would _never_ regret receiving them. Still, everything was so strange now that they were all back together again. Back in the Land of Departure. Their home that had been so happily reembraced by the others, a breath of relief at its familiarity. But where it brought them the deepest form of comfort, Ven could only feel guilt pool in his stomach instead— he was returned to the place he never even left to begin with, confined to its walls for ten years; homesick despite being home. All the while his friends had fought for their right to return here.

And all he had been was  _asleep._ Living out a life that wasn’t his, trapped in a dream. _Never the wiser._

They were together so often lately, making up for lost time, glued at the hip— as if they feared, with a blink of an eye, one of them would be gone again. Ven thought that, maybe, he was being spoiled by it— so filled with affection and a sense of _belonging_ all day— but when nighttime came and they'd said their goodnights, a raw anxiety crept up his spine, like the chill of a ghost hanging off his back.

_If he'd close his eyes would they open again?_

They'd begun to feel silly all sleeping together, a bizarre ritual of taking rounds where one would stay up to watch over the others until their eyelids gave in too. The early weeks after their return were the hardest; calming the other after they woke in a fit of panic— thrashing, screaming in their sleep. Waking up crying had become the worst. They’d somehow grown more tired than they'd ever been before. And now they'd called it off.

 _It was a good thing,_ Ven told himself over and over. Perhaps they were getting better. Slowly, but steadily, things were returning to a broken sense of normal.

And yet, seeing each other off before bed still felt like a funeral dirge, but he'd keep the complacent smile. The happiest lit to his voice when wishing them sweet dreams…

_They didn’t need to know._

Laying there now, his room felt small. The blankets were vices, holding him down to drown. The quiet ringing in his ears made them itch, the open air running his thoughts wild, too free and unrestrained. He _wished_ he could see his friends, the only thing that could fill the nagging dread and ease the fears in him when sunset would begin. He grew terrified of the day that looking into Aqua's honest eyes and feeling Terra's palm clasp against his shoulder would stop working.

It was a short walk, a couple doors down the hall but he _wouldn't_. Not when they were healing as much as he was. 

From this reluctance, a questionable habit was born; a secret Ven kept close to his heart. It had started on a night like this, restless and so very fearful of the solitude. Loneliness eating away at him. An idea. A temptation he'd staved off for a few nights now. How  _a_ _few weeks_ were quickly turning into  _a_ _few days_...his dependency deepening.

He rolled to his side, slouching the blanket off his chest for goosebumps to prickle along his arms. The nightlight on his desk— the shape of a globe, planetary and blue— was the only barrier. Ventus reached a hand out to pull its cord; a once warm glow, extinguished— plunged into darkness, save for the faintest cold light of the moon leaking in from the window. The unspoken sign between them. 

He knew, if he waited long enough, that _he_ would appear. Like a page out of a children's book— the monster coveted by the shadows, always by his side, watching, lying in wait...

Somewhere in the pages, it stopped being scary.

"Vanitas." 

 _Stupid, irrational, desperate..._ when had he started to look forward to _this_? 

"Vanitas?"

He called to the open void. Nothing _..._ yet it was so entirely unnecessary to call for him at all when Ven knew his heart had already made the connection for them. It was more of some strange formality he couldn’t break. Politeness ingrained in his core.

And he counted the stars like he always would. Waiting. Staring out at their expanse always eased the nerves.

_Fifteen...sixteen...seventeen..._

"What are you doing?"

The other’s abrupt arrival used to startle him, now Ven barely paid any mind to it. No ‘ _hello_ ,’ never a ‘ _hello_.’ Something too dangerously familiar and _normal_ to be found in it. Vanitas’ rudeness was characteristic, expected, as he leaned on the dresser near the foot of the bed and stared down at him. Gold eyes watching his other half, feigning disinterest despite the question.

It had been a few days since Vanitas began arriving with his face uncovered, expressions free for Ventus to see, his voice clear and unmuffled. A rickety bridge of trust built between them.

Ventus, slouched against the headboard, was lost in the sky.

"Counting stars. You should try it sometime."

"I'll pass."

Vanitas ran an idle finger along the succulent’s leaves hanging from the shelf. He’d been here often lately, enough to become too familiar with these bedroom walls— to the point where they had begun giving him more comfort than the shadows ever did; and to the point where sleeping alone had begun to be a nightly struggle. He was learning what the solution to insomnia was, eyeing the bed rather than getting on it, as if that act would be willingly admitting to the human weakness growing inside of his heart.

The lonely pair basked in each other’s presence until Ven spoke up. Giving a voice to what they both wanted.

“Come here.”

“Try asking nicer.”

“ _Vanitas."_  

Voices hushed to match the quiet of the castle. Their secret was one they definitely did not need revealed to anyone else. The creaking of the wood under Vanitas’ boots was thunderous to Ven’s ears as he came closer. Predatory in the way he crawled onto the bed with an unrelenting focus, on all fours, arms and legs caging Ven in as he slunk forward. Their eyes locked together; where Ven was thought to be perceived as prey, he knew better. Nothing would come of the intimidation.    

It was a closeness that neither of them had been brave enough to advance until recently, one that had come naturally a quite a few nights ago out of a spat— one of their earliest meetings boiling over into the physical, Vanitas shoving Ventus into the mattress to silence him. A push back, a move forward, legs tangling. Frustrations welling over into a confusion of emotions, the closeness melting into something warm and _unfamiliar_. Necessary and numbing.

Something they were beginning to embrace.

Vanitas straddled him, hands planted on either side above Ven’s shoulders— unwilling to rest his weight but letting his presence speak for itself. He hovered over Ventus’ face, inches from each other, noses barely about to touch. Vanitas was holding his breath, frozen in place much like Ven himself— afraid that anything, the rustle of sheets, a shifted limb, a flutter of their chests at taking a breath, might scare the moment away and catapult them back into their comfortable void of disdain. 

It was Ven who moved first. Always Ven. A small brush of his fingers, reaching up to drag along Vanitas’ jaw and along the lines of his cheekbones, until resting where his hair begins. A gesture so undeserving towards an  _abomination_. But Ven didn't seem to think so, he never did; worsening the spell by carting those fingers against his scalp and cupping his cheek. Ven's eyes went unmoving, a gaze curious and soft, so unlike the countless times they previously met... a game of chicken one of them would call off before it became too serious.

But this time, Ven looked how he  _used_  be. Before their separation, before he was torn from his home.

The boy that Vanitas used to dream of returning to, the one he used to watch from afar...Brave and coveting of what the world had in store for him. As if he could reach up and touch every star, join them; his presence as bright as they could ever be.

Vanitas let out a sigh, Ventus moved in to kiss him. A matter of seconds that dragged for eternity— the crane of his neck and lift of his chest bringing them close, the part of his lips and the way he breathed Vanitas' name, not a question or demand. Simply because it felt right against his tongue. Because he _wanted_ to say it. The way their noses bumped briefly before their lips slotted together and how Vanitas, for the faintest flash of a second felt  _whole_. They breathed through each other, finally one in the same, an achieved union through the opposite of the once intended violence. Overwhelming in every sense. 

Their mouths moved in sync, nothing short of a clumsy rhythm— a shyness beneath it all, comfortable in their shared embarrassment of inexperience… The first means of affection Vanitas was ever gifted and the first means of intimate affection Ven had ever allowed himself to have. 

The first experience they’d shared _together_ in a long, long time.

They selfishly wanted more and greedily took it.

Desperate in how they clung to each other— Ven digging his fingers into the back of those black spikes, much softer than he’d ever imagined, while Vanitas fisted his hand in the fabric of his shirt. They only allowed the briefest moment to break apart to breathe; foreheads still stuck together, eyes closed. Ven had pecked at his lips in the meantime until Vanitas pressed forward again. Again and _again_.   

Vanitas felt alight and his body burned, so unnervingly that it rendered his eyes squeezed shut long after Ven pulled away and reopened his own. His hand still rested on his other’s cheek, letting his mind buzz with empty thoughts for the first time since coming home.

He’d wait for Vanitas to gather the courage to look back. Running the pad of his thumb across his lips did the trick.

His eyelashes framed the hazy gold of his irises, and Ven wondered, if he ever forwent the darkness, would they remain the same color? Would they soften to a blue identical to his? Perhaps he was thinking too naively— still drunk off of the feeling of someone else's lips on his. He always was easy to become starstruck.

Vanitas released the grip on his shirt allowing Ven to sink back into the mattress. And Ven moved, smiling something coy, to take his hand in his, to interlace their fingers, to melt into the warmth of their beings coming together again— only to be torn from it. Vanitas recoiled as if burned, sitting back against Ventus' legs; the hesitant shyness gone in the blink of an eye, replaced with a distinct sharpness to his brows. A clear avoidance of whatever had come over them.  

"Vanit—"

" _Don't_." His voice was pitched, the typical aggression interlaced through it. And yet the body language— the haughty tip of his chin, the smirk accompanying words of  _poison—_ was nowhere to be seen. Vanitas' eyes stared out the window, choosing instead to see through the stars that he'd so rudely interrupted the counting of. His lips were drawn into a terse scowl, contemplative. Ven's eyes were unwavering, he knew. And Vanitas couldn't meet them again. Unknown emotions heading to a violent frustration welling up inside of him. 

A misunderstood sense of ecstasy. 

The dream suddenly switching to a nightmare.

Ven balked at the rejection, embarrassment turning to agitation so fast it made his head spin. He wanted to let the words bubbling in his throat escape, a spluttered ‘ _what’s your_ _problem,_ ’ but he wouldn’t. Vanitas had made it clear there was no room for explanation. What good was another fight between the two of them? So Ven tried again, an attempt at gripping his wrist this time— he too could be equally as stubborn. Deft fingers reaching out to wrap around the flesh, squeezing in a plea to _stop running_ from him. And Vanitas accepted the aggression. So entirely fearful of anything but.

They’d settled at that; moments passing until Ven felt it safe to lessen his grip, to draw lazy circles over the gloved skin with his thumb.

“I don’t see what you get from it.” Vanitas cut through the silence, transfixed.

“Get from…what?”

“Counting the stars.”

_Oh. So that’s what he’d been doing._

“It’s pointless. There’s too many…you only end up drowning in them.”

A relieved smile curved the corners of Ven’s lips at the serious look on his face, always so straightforward, literal and to the point. “It’s not supposed to be exact.” He too began to stare out into the sky, its expanse far more sensible to his eyes. “Have you ever seen a constellation before?”

“Wouldn’t know what to look for.” 

Ven leaned up, shifting him further into his lap, closing the gap Vanitas created. “’S not so hard. Some night, we’ll take my telescope, go out to the cliffs and I’ll show you everything.” He hadn’t expected a reply, content in letting the idea settle. Never considering that _this_ could be a one-time ordeal. He knew it wasn’t. They couldn’t stay away from each other.

They stayed together for awhile, until the imprint of the stars rested heavy on their eyelids. The threat of sleep weighing between them. Even breath as their eyes met. Ventus thought to kiss him again, but he would wait. Head deciding to touch the pillow instead, blond hair spilling out around him like a halo. Comfortable enough to shut his eyes, living in a world teetering between real and dreams. A space he was all too horribly familiar with, easier to dive into knowing he wasn’t alone. 

The weight of a hand gently slipped in Ven’s own, the twitch of fingers against his skin, unsure and experimental, guiding him into sleep’s depths. 

Before it fully claimed him, Ven exhaled the once unthinkable from behind the mask of his closed eyes. Clear as day against the silence, unmistakable—

"Stay with me." 

 


End file.
